Yellowstone bison predicted an earthquake?

Do animals have a sixth sense for detecting natural disasters before they hit?

Though scientists have been hard-pressed to prove it, a recent online video of bison stampeding down a highway in Yellowstone National Park has set off rumors across the Internet.

A 4.8-magnitude earthquake struck the park on Sunday - the strongest tremor the park has felt since 1980. No damage or injuries were reported, but the video, which claims that the herd could feel the quake before it happened, sparked fear of an impending volcanic eruption.

The video - captioned "Alert! Yellowstone Buffalo Running for Their Lives - was posted on YouTube more than a week before the quake hit. It appears to be fake, but given the fact that Yellowstone is sitting on what's called a super volcano, a lot of people believed it.

So much so that Yellowstone officials put out their own video hoping to dispel the myth.

Bison, elk and other animals have moved out of the park, but mostly because of the changing seasons, Nash said.

"They tend to migrate outside the park to lower elevations where they think there's something to eat that's easier to get at," Nash said.

On the other hand, a three-year German study of ants living in mounds on a fault line showed that the ants moved out of their mounds right before earthquakes measuring 2.0 and up. There were 10 such earthquakes and the ants temporarily departed all 10 times.

Ants, however, are a little harder to see than a charging herd of bison, but seem to be a bit more accurate.